Thursday, August 15, 2013

My Review of Dexter's 8x07: "Dress Code"

After that nice little cameo in last week’s episode, everyone’s favourite little poison expert is deservedly the main focus of this week’s episode. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Hannah return all season long and now that she’s here, it’s certainly a mixed bag for everyone involved.

First of all – did the writers really need to make Hannah into a victim of an abusive husband? It kind of felt like a tacked on way of generating sympathy for the character but at the same time, her arrangement with Miles was definitely something I didn’t want to see dragged out for several episodes, so thank goodness she bumped off in this episode.

Unlike previous victims, Hannah had some mixed feelings about killing Miles. Initially she wanted Dexter’s help in order to do but changed her mind because she’s still in love with him. I’m glad the writers addressed that one during her scenes with Dexter in this episode but can she be trusted though?

Miles was an abusive man she killed in self defence and while Hannah admitted that she doesn’t get off on killing people, she certainly has no problem with doing it to get rid of obstacles. Deb will certainly be an obstacle for Hannah and both Vogel and Zach have the potential to be ones too. Will Hannah try and kill either of them?

Deb already sussed in this episode that Dexter’s feelings for Hannah were still prominent and she didn’t hold back her disgust when she realised that Harrison had affection for the black widow as well. However, this episode did seem to give an impression that Hannah might be redeemable and Dexter himself certainly made no effort to take her out at all.

He was openly jealous about her marriage to Miles and kept questioning her motives for returning to Miami. More to the point, he also helped Hannah dispose of Miles’s body as well and begged her not to leave town. Needless to say, Dexter really is besotted with Hannah and that’s going to be a problem.

Hannah’s return took over his mentoring of Zach and the little psychopath responded by killing poor Cassie as well. I know Vogel seems annoyingly determined to champion Zach as another Dexter but in reality, he’s just another Brain Surgeon with too much information on her and Dexter. This is one time bomb Dexter might want to defuse sooner rather than later.

Also in “Dress Code”

Hannah was given the new name of Maggie Castner upon marrying Miles and seems to have gotten over her fear of water as well.

Dexter: “What are you doing back in Miami?”
Hannah: “I was about to enjoy a martini.”

Nikki was working as topless waitress while Masuka trying to get her as his lab assistant. I’m not really sure where they’re going with this plot to be honest. Elway’s attitude with Deb was a little annoying in this episode, even if she was snappy with him.

Dexter (re Miles): “Why did you marry him?”
Hannah: “Because he was there when you weren’t.”

Hannah became the third person this season to see Dexter’s full ritual. That probably means Zach will see it soon too if he’s not killed off next week.

Deb: “You don’t know who I am.”
Elway: “I just want a chance to find out.”

Deb (to Cassie): “Trust me, Dexter is not a mystery you want to solve.”

Chronology: From where “A Little Reflection” left off.

Definitely a better episode than the previous one. “Dress Code” nicely placed Hannah back into the mix of Dexter’s growing little family but like Zach, it’s too early to tell if she’s going to be a success or a failure for Dexter though.

About Me

My name is Shawn Lunn and when I don't blog regularly on TV, I write a serious amount of reviews for a variety of different TV programmes as well as comics, books and DVDs pertaining to them (which can be found on my TV Tome and Shawnlunn2002 TVHITS Yahoo Group, also linked here) as well as on this blog. I'm a huge fan of all innovative and smart television.